It is a painting by Giacoma Balla, entitled Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash and it is one of my favorites. I love when artists capture movement in a still image…it probably appeals to my love of animation.

Somehow I never bothered to look up Balla’s other paintings. Tonight I did a long overdue Google search. Here are two more that stood out to me (Street Light and The Hand of the Violinist):

It’s been awhile since I’ve seen a good behind the scenes video, but boy this one has set fire to my brain. If anyone wants to buy me a laser cutter for Christmas, BY ALL MEANS.

The Bear & the Hare is a John Lewis Christmas advertisement directed by Yves Geleyn and Elliot Dear. The hand-drawn animation was done by Dominic Carola and Aaron Blaise, two veterans of the Disney Florida studios. If you’re interested in seeing the full advertisement, you can watch below:

Colored pencils illustrations by Genevieve Godbout. The following illustrations are all from the same children’s book about an ogress. (Unfortunately I’m having trouble finding the book’s name…) In any case, the illustrations are my favorite from her blog. There’s a nice contrast between the ugliness of the ogress and the softness of the colored pencil.

The world needs a new Bakshi cartoon, and that’s reason enough to donate. But as added incentive, he’s also giving away some great prizes. Original Bakshi doodles start at just $35. Plus loads of cels and artwork for the larger donors.

Last night was Bill Plympton and Patrick Smith’s second annual drawn film festival. I enjoyed many of the films, but Story from North America was by far my favorite. It was directed and animated by Kirsten Lepore and Garrett Davis back in 2007 (Davis also wrote and performed the film’s music) Everything about it is so endearing and infectious to me – it totally won me over. Don’t make any judgements from the still image! Just hit play!

I wrote about Kirsten back in 2010 when I saw her stop-motion film, Bottle. Check it out if you haven’t already!